Graduate students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at CU-Boulder receive extensive language-teaching training and experience coordinated by Senior Instructor Anne Becher that will serve as an excellent base for their professional development.

Orientation

A week-long orientation before the first semester of teaching introduces new graduate student instructors to the communicative language teaching approach, and helps develop a familiarity with the methods and the materials in our program’s 5-credit Beginning Spanish One course.  Every graduate student instructor will teach his or her own 22-student section of the course.

Please see the Manual for New Instructors

Methods and Pedagogy Mini-Seminar

During students’ first semester in the graduate program, while they are teaching, they take a 5-week mini-seminar on Methods and Pedagogy.  The instructor for this seminar, Anne Becher, is also the Coordinator for Beginning Spanish One, and she supports and guides new instructors during the semester as they put pedagogical theories and methods into practice in their classrooms.

Teaching Assignments

During students’ first year in our Department they teach Beginning Spanish One, and their second year they usually move into Beginning Spanish Two.  Doctoral students will rotate between these two levels and our fifth-semester course, Advanced Spanish Language Skills, according to their preferences and the needs of our Department. All of the courses that graduate instructors teach while in our program are coordinated, and Coordinators provide support and feedback to help graduate student instructors continue to grow professionally. Summer teaching assignments may include one of our three-credit intermediate courses, Second Year Spanish One or Two.

Training Opportunities Outside of our Department

In addition to teaching, graduate students are encouraged attend teaching workshops through two unique and highly-regarded programs at CU-Boulder.

The Graduate Teaching Program offers many workshops tailored to the needs of graduate student instructors, and is aimed at preparing them for teaching responsibilities they will face throughout their academic career. It offers a certificate to graduate student instructors who fulfill all of the program’s requirements.  Two doctoral students in our Department serve as Leads and Liaisons with the GTP.

The Anderson Language and Technology Center’s Foreign Language Technology Program provides training through its bi-weekly workshops on the pedagicially-appropriate use of many different forms of technology, and certificates are also awarded to those completing the requirements of the program.